


A ray in the shadows

by JaqofSpades



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gratuitous Fangirling of Pablo Neruda, Minor Miloe, TSC prompt 284
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-18
Packaged: 2018-04-21 10:52:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4826360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/pseuds/JaqofSpades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The words, twisting and slithering into that place that will never allow him to forget, are a part of him now, whispering of his past, this night, the unknowable future to come. Somehow, this poem is the primer for his life. And maybe his death too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. My Republic

**Author's Note:**

> Written for The Orgy Armada's challenge, The Second Coming: Prompt 284:. “my terrestrial day and night were your mouth, and your skin the Republic founded by my kisses” (Neruda). Chapter 1 is my fill for Bass/Shelly and Chapter 2, Bass/Charlie. But this is very much one coherent story about Bass. (I hope.)
> 
> **The poems quoted are Neruda’s[Sonnet XC](http://jaqofspades.tumblr.com/post/129382280017/i-thought-of-dying) and [Sonnet XII](http://jaqofspades.tumblr.com/post/129381677682/full-woman-carnal-apple-hot-moon) from ‘100 Sonnets’, and [It is Born](http://jaqofspades.tumblr.com/post/129383665552/it-is-born) from ‘On the Blue Shores of Silence.**

“Modern history,” she says, and Bass is so busy watching the dimple in her cheek play peekaboo that he forgets to keep Miles in line. They were introduced three days ago, and the woman is as hot as sin, and that’s all Miles needs to make a move.

“That’s not the Civil War is it? Because if it is, this guy will talk your ear off, and that’d be bad,” Miles offers, deadpan. “You have really pretty ears.”

Bass stiffens the minute Miles sidles into his throaty, panty dropper voice. .He’s been hearing it since the tenth grade and sometimes, it’s his very favorite thing.   It means Miles will touch her in a minute, earlobe probably, and then tangle a finger in one of her crazy curls. That’ll be the cue for Bass to stroke her knee, and if she doesn’t object, move in for a kiss while Miles nibbles at her neck. Some girls get naked within minutes.

Not this girl, something inside of him insists. Shelley. Her name is Shelley, even if Miles doesn’t care enough to remember. The hot black chick, he’d called her, and Bass had rolled his eyes and sucked back his urge to bite.

“Shelley the hot historian,” he’d deflected, because Miles thinks his history kink is _hilarious_ , and the chance to poke fun at him will mean he leaves it alone, the fact that Bass cares enough to remember this girl’s name. He likes the way it flips on his tongue, even if it evokes a rush of complicated feelings he’s pretty sure Miles doesn’t want to know about.

Complicated as in: he wants to get her naked, sure, but he doesn’t need Miles there at the time. Doesn’t want to have to divide his attention between them. Doesn’t fancy the mental gymnastics he has to do to decide whether it’s pussy or cock that’s getting him so hard, or the leashed intensity on his brother’s face. He’s been in love with Miles too long, and Shelley, Shelley …

Something tells him she could be the one to set him free.

Shelley doesn’t seem to like Miles much, her eyes flinty as she rebuffs his flirt. “They’re ears. Like everyone else has,” she says dismissively, and shifts away, towards Bass. Her entire posture changes as she smiles at him, not seductively, but … open.

“Why the Civil War?”

“Why history at all?” he shrugs, because he’s never really known why he loves the uniforms and the weapons and the battlefield accounts as much as he does. “I just … we’re soldiers, right? And everything we do … did … has its roots there. Birthplace of modern warfare.”

She’s looking puzzled and normally he’d get Miles to help him out here (because the bastard knows a lot more about military history than he’ll ever admit) but … he rubs a finger over the tattoo on his arm instead. Just his index finger, the others curled tightly in his fist, and Miles glowers at him for a second before he levers himself to his feet.

“And I’ve heard all this before. I’m going to leave you two nerds at it and find me someone talking about beer and the ballgame,” he smirks, the mirth falling from his face as he raises an eyebrow at Bass. _Done, brother._

Tonight, M stands for Monroe.

He offers Miles a salute of thanks then angles his body back to hers. “What about you? How’d you end up studying history?”

Her smile is wry. “Poetry, would you believe. I fell in love with this Chilean poet, Neruda. Started with his love sonnets but his political stuff just grabbed me and before I knew it, I ended up doing my thesis on aspects of the Revolution in epic poetry. Eventually I end up working in the history department rather than the lit department,” she shrugs, as if embarrassed by her passion.

He wants to tell her it’s the sexiest thing he’s ever seen, but for the first time in his life he’s too intimidated to open his mouth.

“The irony of it is that when everything stopped, I’d been on my way home to visit my folks and I’d promised not to bring any work home.” She reaches down into the duffel at her feet, and pulls out a slender volume. “So all I had with me was this.”

Bass takes the opportunity to move closer, then lets his hand stroke over hers as he takes the book. He tries not to smirk as he reads the title - _100 Love Sonnets_ \- and allows the book fall open on a well-thumbed page, hoping for something revealing. Erotic, if he’s lucky. “I thought of dying, I felt the cold close by …”

At first, the words are an afterthought as he watches her out of the corner of his eye, marveling at the vertiginous slope of her cheek, and the spray of dark lashes when her eyes drift shut as she listens. Then the rhythm catches him, and he can’t help but pay attention himself, his heart starting to pound as the meaning filters in, line after line, each verse a revelation.

“ … there is only your glance for so much emptiness, only your clarity to cease being, only your love to close the darkness.”

He blinks, stunned, the demands of his body only registering once he is able to pull himself from the vast, swirling whirlpool of his mind.

Somewhere out in the night, Miles is getting drunk, and Jeremy is trying to get laid. Tom and Julia Neville are no doubt scheming, and Jim Hudson is telling stories, the kids of the camp hanging on his every word. Situation Normal, All Fucked Up. But there’s gooseflesh pricking at the back of his neck, and a vast, yawning _something_ trying to get his attention.

They’re just words, he tells himself, but it doesn’t stop the frantic slamming of his heart. You like this woman a lot, he rationalises, and he really, really does, but that’s not what has dumped him on the edge of a panic attack. It’s the words, twisting and slithering into that place that will never allow him to forget, part of him now, whispering of his past, this night, the unknowable future to come.

Except, somehow he knows. Somehow, this poem is the primer for his life. And maybe his death too.

“Only your love to close the darkness,” Shelley repeats softly, her husky alto making his cock quiver with awareness. He needs, he needs …

He kisses her slow, the words still reverberating in his head. “My terrestrial day and night,” he growls when he lifts his head, and she knows it as the invitation it is. They walk back to his tent slowly, no need to hurry forever, and she takes her own clothes off, folding them neatly as he sprawls on his bedroll, watching.

There’s no bashfulness in her smile, nothing coy or forced as she stands naked before him, nipples already puckered and the nest of dark curls below promisingly damp. “Come conquer your Republic, general,” she invites, and it’s just play, a sexy adult game, but that smile, that smile … he’d conquer the world to see it again.

Four years later it will be that smile haunting him as he scrawls his signature on the papers proclaiming the birth of the Monroe Republic. She would have hated it, his leftist revolutionary love. But it had been born that day, come out screaming in that gush of blood and gore that claimed two innocent lives, just like Neruda had predicted.

Death had come knocking on his door, and taken everything. Clarity is his, sharp and cruel in the glare of the new day. He does what he must, but it’s hard every time. Until it’s not. The man he is can’t survive in the face of who he needs to become, so he lets go of Bass-who-loved-Shelly. Turns his soul over to Miles one more time.

Dies. Again and again and again. When there’s no one left to pull him back, the fall is easy. Almost welcome.

Life will pursue him no more.


	2. Come knocking

He’s kicking his way through a pile of corpses when a bolt whizzes past his head, taking out the Patriot lurching towards his back. He nods, grateful, and his world shrinks to the wide, white grin he gets in return. Fuck. He’s so –

“Loving is a battle of lightning bolts,” his favorite spectre hums appreciatively, and Bass has to bite down on a curse. She’d never really left him, but he’d dismissed her as an alcohol-fuelled hallucination for most of the decade she’d been gone. Only lately has he realised that his grip on sanity is fine, thank you very much, and yet Shelley still insists on having her say.

And Charlie Matheson is who she wants to talk about.

“… two bodies by one honey subdued.”

It’s too much for him, his dead wife dripping eroticism into his ear while he tries not to stare at the girl who is pure poetry on the battlefield. He doesn’t do well with temptation, and she has no idea what she’s doing to him, so it’s not like she wants anything from him. He’s saved her life a few times, and gratitude looks good on her, he tells himself. It’s nothing more than that.

Even if emotion swells to block his throat every time they fall into one of those long stares that trap him like quicksand. He’s terrified of what they’re saying in those moments, even as neither of them say a single word.

“Everything ceased to be, except your eyes,” Shelley reminds him, and no. He’s not in love with her. Refuses to be.

He remembers that warm, internal fire, and what it’s like to lose it. Cold, creeping death. And because he’s Sebastian Monroe, he can’t even do that right. His pain is a cancer that infects everyone around him.

So he sucks it up, and keeps his distance. Tells Connor to go for it instead of giving in to the persistent urge to strangle the boy.   Lets himself slip back into General Monroe whenever her gaze gets too soft. Flagellates himself by watching Rachel scoff at her daughter’s magnificence and derail his every attempt to make things right with Miles.

And he leaves, over and over again. It doesn’t take until the third time, when their little mustard gas caper bites deep enough to send him out into the night without even a nod goodbye to Charlie.

“But oh when death comes to knock on the door ..”

He should have known the Neville would go after her. Could almost understand, having been willing to sacrifice himself for the son he barely knew. But it was Charlie, and Miles in front of her, and he couldn’t breathe at the thought of either of them dead.

She’s tense but calm when her eyes catch his afterwards and they might as well be right back at square one. “You came back,” and “a thank you would be nice,” and “it’s nice to finally meet you, Charlotte.”

All his damn fool sins, stupid loyalty and foolhardy bravery and the dripping, bleeding heart all conspiring to make him feel everything, so intensely, he’s paralysed. The right thing to do – and it _is_ the right thing to do, he still knows enough about right and wrong to be sure of that – means next to nada to his son, who whines like a little bitch than vanishes into the night.

He tells himself he’s not choosing Charlie and Miles over his son, no matter what Connor thinks. No matter how much it hurts to watch the boy give up on him, stepping aside to give Neville and Scanlon a clear shot.

So much to regret, yet all he can think about is the way she’d taken that sharp breath when he stepped into view, and how the sweet curve of her lip had begged him to taste it in a long-awaited hello.

One day, he’ll take it, he vows. When life pursues them a little less.

“There is only your love to close the darkness,” Shelley begs, but the killing, the dying … it boils up to consume him.   Gene goes first, then Aaron and Priscilla, then Rachel, then Connor. He can’t see, can’t feel, can’t allow himself to think for the grief.

Every time he looks at Miles the resentment chokes him, and Charlie is forged from iron, cold and hard and stiff in a way that’s painfully familiar. She still has Miles, he reminds himself, and manages to resent her for that.

This time he won’t give her the chance to say “you came back.”

*

He’s staring out to sea when he hears the soft shuffle of boots behind him. He doesn’t need to look to know it is her. He hasn’t ached like that since the day he left, more than five years ago.

“Y cada vez se rompia la sombra, Con un golpe de ola*,” he murmurs to himself as the waves spray upwards in their triumph over the rocks.

“Miles said you wouldn’t be this far south because you didn’t speak Spanish,” she frowns, and he has to yank his eyes away from the little crease between her eyebrows, the quizzical line of her mouth lest she vanish, just one more spectre sent to nag him.

“Gotta learn sometime,” he shrugs, and returns his attention to the sea.

She drops her backpack on the chair near the door and comes to stand next to him. “So what is this place? Someone was trying to explain, back in the village, something about poemas, but I couldn’t follow it all.”

He nods to the framed photographs sitting on the table. “This was the house of a poet called Neruda. He was a favourite of mine, so I came to see it, and it needed a caretaker.” She can fill in the gaps.

‘What did he write about?”

“Love. And Revolution.”

She shakes her head, and in that moment he sees how infinitely older and wiser she has become. She’d be nearly thirty now, he figures. Still too young to be bothering with an old monster like him, but old enough to know her own mind. To figure out that sometimes, you didn’t have to wait for someone to come back. And that maybe they wanted to, but couldn’t.

“So which were we, Bass?”

She’s here, a ray of light in the shadows of his life, and all the old logic, all the demons keeping them apart ... he’s done feeding them. Done hiding. He’s too old for that shit now. Fast running out of second (and third, and fourth) chances.

He turns away from the blue of the sea to drown in the blue of her eyes, and breathes his answer straight onto her lips.

“Too much of one, not enough of the other. But that’s done now. Did you close the door?”

Charlie’s hands are already running under his t-shirt, sliding over his age-worn body and making him feel like a teenager again. The kiss starts slow, and reverent, then spins rapidly out of control as they push up against the thick, handmade glass, sun pouring in all around them.

This, he vows as he scatters kisses down the length of her golden body, will be poem of light, and joy. There’s hundreds of them lying around in this house, collected in beautiful antique volumes and scribbled on napkins and framed under glass. He’ll happily read them all, just to find the right poem for them.

Or maybe, he exults as he sinks into her, he’ll honor their tangled, tortured path with an epic of his own.

_Fin_

* “And over and over the shadows would be broken by the crash of a wave,” from Neruda, It is Born.


End file.
